DESCRIPTION: The PI notes that the major goal of this work is to develop new techniques for the efficient formation of carbon-carbon bonds which can be used for the synthesis of biologically and pharmaceutically interesting molecules, pharmaceutical manufacturing and combinatorial chemistry. A particular focus of this work is to be the development of chemistry which employs simple, readily available building blocks which can be efficiently combined to prepare complex structures. It is indicated that in addition to the development of fundamentally new techniques of use in organic synthesis, issues which relate to cost, efficiency, safety and ease of use are to be of importance. The PI states that the work includes: 1) the study of the use of intramolecular insertion reactions of zirconocene and titanocene complexes of arynes to prepare tricyclic metallacycles as a means for the synthesis of indoles and related heterocycles; 2) the development of simple techniques for the preparation of polysubstituted aromatics. He notes that included will be the development of methods to regioselectively convert monosubstituted aromatics into trisubstituted aromatics and tetrasubstituted aromatics; 3) the study of catalytic coupling of small organic fragments into a variety of carbocycles and heterocycles using titanium, nickel and zirconium catalysts; 4) the development of catalytic processes for the asymmetric hydrofunctionalization of olefins to selectively prepare a variety of polyfunctionalized, enantiomerically enriched compounds.